http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/2016-donald-trump-tabloids-new-york-post-daily-news-media-213842by Susan Mulcahy
I have a confession to make, and please don’t shoot when you hear it: I helped make the myth of Donald Trump. And for that, I am very, very sorry.
If you worked for a newspaper in New York in the 1980s, you had to write about Trump. As editor of the
New York Post’s Page Six, and later as a columnist for
New York Newsday, I needed to fill a lot of space, ideally with juicy stories of the rich and powerful, and Trump more than obliged. I wrote about his real estate deals. I wrote about his wife, his yacht, his parties, his houses. At times, I would let several months go by without a single column mention of The Donald; this doubtless upset him, as he loves Page Six and used to have it brought it to him the moment it arrived in his office. But eventually I returned to the subject, as did a legion of other writers. We didn’t see it at the time, but item by inky item we were turning him into a New York icon.
Trump had a different way of doing things. He wanted attention, but he could not control his pathological lying. Which made him, as story subjects go, a lot of work. Every statement he uttered required more than the usual amount of fact-checking. If Trump said, “Good morning,” you could be pretty sure it was five o’clock in the afternoon.
Denying facts was almost a sport for Trump, and extended even to mundane matters. While still married to his first wife, Ivana, Trump bought a mansion in Connecticut, and she decorated parts of it. Not the most earth-shattering news, but hey, everyone has slow days. When I called to confirm the purchase, Trump denied it, more than once. Sure enough, before long, he was spending weekends in the mansion, parts of which were decorated by Ivana. Did he think twice about such a seemingly pointless lie? Why would he?
Trump’s lawyer was Roy Cohn, another tabloid fixture. When I first began dealing with Cohn, I always felt as if I needed a bath afterward, knowing his history as Joseph McCarthy’s henchman, for starters. But I learned to appreciate his value as a source. Cohn gave stories to reporters all over the city at both conservative and liberal media outlets; he was an equal opportunity leaker, and mostly a reliable one. He would even give you stories about his clients, like Trump.
Trump was so outrageous—and outrageously tacky—it was a constant temptation to write about his antics, particularly because he thought he was the height of sophistication.
(Excerpt. More at the link.)
